kept quiet about what they did suggests the boy was simply killed out of hand.” He blew out a long breath. “I doubt we’ll ever know the truth.”
“No, you’re probably right.” Henry sighed. “I’ll take this information to Sir James at Bow Street tonight.”
Devlin fixed him with an uncomfortably fierce yellow stare. “I suppose you must, but—” He broke off.
Henry raised one eyebrow. “You think there’s something you’ve missed?”
“I don’t know. I wish I understood better the part Jarvis’s son played in all this.”
“There is no evidence that Matt Parker’s brother spoke the truth. Who would take the word of a hanged sailor against the testimony of the likes of Sir Humphrey Carmichael or Lord Stanton?”
The Viscount set his teacup aside and stood up. “In this instance? I would.”
Sebastian returned to his house on Brook Street to be intercepted in the hall by his majordomo.
“There is a woman here to see you, my lord. A
“A Mrs. Bellamy?” said Sebastian sharply.
“That is the name she gave. Yes, my lord.”
Sebastian turned toward the stairs. “Send up some tea and cakes, Morey, and tell them I won’t be but a moment.”
He found Mrs. Bellamy seated in one of the cane-backed chairs beside the front bow window. At the sight of him, her mouth parted in surprise and she dropped the black-edged handkerchief she had been clutching. The child, Francesca, perched on the edge of a sofa near the empty hearth, a scorched leather-bound volume clutched against her thin chest, her eyes huge in a wan, pale face.
“Mrs. Bellamy, Francesca. My apologies for keeping you waiting. You should not have troubled yourself to make the journey up to London to see me. I would have been more than happy to wait upon you in Greenwich, had you but sent word.”
The Captain’s widow cast her daughter a quick, enigmatic glance. “Oh, my lord! I did not wish to trouble you at all. I thought Mr. Taylor must have left your card with me by mistake, and I came only in the hopes you might be able to direct me to him. It was Francesca who insisted we stay.”
Sebastian went to pour the tea that stood, neglected, upon the table. “Please accept my apologies for the deception I practiced upon you in Greenwich. I feared if I approached Captain Bellamy under my own name, he might refuse to see me.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “And why would that be, my lord?”
“I suspect the Captain was warned not to speak to me.” He held out a cup. “Please, have some tea.”
She took the cup automatically, but did not drink it.
He turned toward Francesca. “And you, Miss Bellamy? Would you care for some tea and cakes?”
“No, thank you,” she said with painful seriousness, and held out the leather-bound book. “We’ve brought you this.”
“What is it?” asked Sebastian, not moving to take it from her.
It was Mrs. Bellamy who answered. “The ship’s log. From the
Sebastian watched the child run one hand over the log’s charred binding. “Have you read it?” he asked, glancing at the widow.
She flushed and shook her head. Too late, Sebastian remembered what Tom had told him in Greenwich, that the Captain’s young Brazilian wife was illiterate. “No,” she said. “But Francesca has.”
Sebastian’s gaze met the child’s, and he saw there the horrified confirmation of everything he’d suspected and more. “You read what happened after the mutiny?” he asked softly.
“I read it all.”
She nodded, the muscles in her jaw held tight. “It’s why Adrian died, isn’t it? It’s why they all died. Because of what Papa and their parents did on that ship.”
Impossible to lie to the child. All he could say was, “I suspect so.”
“Do you know who is doing it?”
“Not yet.”
She laid the log on the tea table and pushed it toward him. “Perhaps this will help.”
Hendon spent most of Saturday afternoon at Carlton House, dealing with a fretful Prince. He was leaving the palace and heading up the Mall when Kat Boleyn drew up her phaeton and pair beside him with a neat flourish.
“I’d like a word with you, my lord,” she said. “Drive with me a ways?”
Hendon looked at the woman before him. She wore a hunter green driving gown embellished with brass epaulets and set off by a cocky green chip hat with a curling ostrich feather. Hendon didn’t hold with females driving phaetons. He dropped his gaze to the restive horseflesh between the traces and was tempted to plead some excuse. But the fact that she had deliberately sought him out raised a glimmer of hope in his breast. Perhaps he might find some way to scotch Devlin’s marriage scheme after all.
He stepped up to the curb and said quizzically, “You wish me to ride with you in that rig?”
She let out a peal of musical laughter. “I promise not to overturn you, my lord. George,” she said to the groom seated beside her, “wait for me here.”
“Yes, miss.”
Hendon climbed up to settle in the space vacated by the groom. She gathered her reins, but before she gave the horses the office to start, she handed Hendon a small painted porcelain oval—a miniature of a dark-haired woman with flashing green eyes and a smile that had once stolen Hendon’s heart.
“Do you recognize this?” Kat Boleyn asked.
Hendon’s fist closed around the filigree-framed porcelain so hard the metal bit into his flesh. “No.”
She cast him a swift glance. “You lie, my lord. The truth is writ plain on your face. Her name was Arabella Noland, and she was your mistress, was she not?”
“What if she was? You think that showing me her portrait now will somehow soften my attitude toward your plans to marry my son? Well, let me tell you something, girl: you’re fair and far out!”
She said nothing, her attention all for the task of guiding her horses through the heavy Saturday-afternoon traffic.
“Where did you get this?” he asked at last.
“It was given to me by Arabella’s sister, Emma Stone.”
“That hateful woman,” said Hendon. “Why should she do such a thing?”
“Mrs. Stone also gave me this portrait of you.” She held out another miniature, and after a moment, Hendon took it from her.
“They are a matched set. Did you give them to Arabella? I wonder. Were they part of your farewell gift to her when you discovered she was with child?”
“No,” he said gruffly, unable to grasp her point. “They were a birthday gift. Why?”
She cast him a look he couldn’t begin to comprehend. “But you knew she had a child by you.”
Hendon worked his jaw back and forth. He saw no point in denying it. “Have you told Devlin of this?”
“No.” She feathered the turning onto Whitehall. “
“I knew. It’s why she left me.”
“She left you?”
Hendon grunted. “I assumed you must know the whole story. It was my intention to take the child away after it was born. Give it to a good family, to be raised in the country.”
